Timely surgery performed on 60-year-old Ijaz Ahmed Bhagwan to remove a 10 cm-long ureteric stone embedded in his ureter saved his left kidney from permanent damage.
Urologist Ravindra Patil and a team of doctors, including Smitha Patil and Girish Swamy, performed a two hour-long surgery on Mr. Bhagwan who had come to the hospital complaining of abdominal pain and difficulty in passing urine a few days ago.
During observation, the doctors noticed the presence of a 10 cm-long stone in the ureter. “Delaying the removal of stone for a few more months would have resulted in the total loss of the left kidney,” said Dr. Patil.
“A CT Scan of the abdominal portion of the patient revealed that there was a small stone obstructing the passage of urine at the mouth of the bladder. Another large stone measuring 10 cm was also found embedded in the passage from the left kidney. However, the patient who experienced mild pain occasionally, surprisingly did not complain of any other discomfert.”
Dr. Patil said that the presence of the ureteric stones is a common among those living in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region owing to a high content of calcium in the drinking water here. Normally, the patients start complaining of pain and difficulty in passing urine once the stone becomes 2 cm in size. This is then removed through conventional methods of drugs, ureteroscopy and laser lithotripsy.
“In this case, however, with the large stone embedded in the lower part of the upper-ureter and whole of the mid-ureter causing total obstruction to left kidney, we had to perform a surgery to remove the stone. The procedure took two hours,” he said, and added that the small stone measuring 2 cms that was obstructing the release of urine was also removed in the process.
The patient, a father of five, has been discharged without any post-operative complication and is leading a normal life.
